Pigs, Police & Protest
content warning: the following article contains descriptions of sexual violence including rape and bestiality, and police violence. Please read with care.
On Monday 11th of March 2024 the ABC’s 7:30 aired a report on Australia’s pig farming industry. It centered around routine practices performed against pigs, such as un-anaesthetized castration, tail and teeth clipping, ear notching, and “thumping” (the practice of beating a small, sick or injured piglet against a concrete floor to kill them. The report featured footage capture by Farm Transparency Project at a Victorian piggery, Midland Bacon. But not all the footage involved routine practice.
The cameras also showed an individual, named as Bradley O’Reilly, enter the sheds after the lights went out. O’Reilly is the son of the facility manager. He entered the farrowing crate of a sow who could not escape, rubbed her vulva as she sought to avoid his touch, and then raped her. O’Reilly has since been charged with bestiality.
What he did was a crime. In fact, it is a crime that historically has been considered so heinous that perpetrators have been burned at the stake or hanged from a gallows in times past. Sometimes, their victims suffered the same fate. In 1649, Scottish man James Wilson was found guilt of bestiality with numerous animals, including a grey mare; Wilson was hanged, and the mare was drowned. Only seven years prior, a New Haven coloniser named George Spencer was accused of bestiality with a pig; he was hanged after the sow had been killed and butchered in front of him. In 2015 Judge John C. Blue of New Haven revisited the case and offered a posthumous pardon for Spencer (there was no mention of the pig).
In Victoria, the crime of bestiality carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Depending on a varied set of circumstances including a lack of prior convictions, the argument of mental impairment, or the views of the magistrate, O’Reilly may never see the inside of a jail cell.
But what of the sow he raped?
She has since been named Olivia by advocates who are campaigning for her release to a sanctuary (a petition is linked at the end of this article). But if this clemency is not granted, Olivia will be imprisoned for the rest of her life. As a breeding sow she will be sexually assaulted again, only in future it will be legal and considered an acceptable practice. Artificial insemination relies upon the sexual molestation of boars to collect semen, as exposed by Animal Liberation Queensland in their investigation into the Wacol pig semen collection facility in Queensland. Sows used for breeding are restrained, their vulvas manually stimulated, and then a catheter is inserted into their vagina to lock with the cervix. Other methods include the catheter being threaded directly into the uterus. Semen is then inserted via a bottle attached to the catheter, and the process may be repeated 12 hours later to ensure pregnancy. If pregnant, she will be contained in a farrowing crate with only space to stand up and lie down again, for many weeks.
Olivia will continue to be sexually assaulted and incarcerated until she is no longer profitable as a breeding sow. Then she will be sent to slaughter, executed via gas or gun or electrocution.
Her crime? She is a pig.
Olivia’s story was triggering.
I am a woman who has been sexually harassed and assaulted many times during my life. I have been raped. And I have been the subject of police brutality for seeking to protect pigs, including a dehumanising strip search that I view as an act of sexual assault. It was enforced upon me as an infliction of retribution by police who did not like being called “fucking cowards” for their actions. This occurred after my arrest at the Benalla slaughterhouse, where 30 activists locked on for over 10 hours, and disrupted the slaughter of pigs via a Co2 gas chamber.
That action was held in April of 2023. Later that year I spoke at the Big Pig Vigil held at Diamond Valley Pork, organised by Farm Transparency Project. I described how my liberation as a woman is integrally tied to the liberation of non-human animals, in this case the pigs who are so cruelly oppressed by my own species. As pigs are punished for being “other” than human, so too was I punished by the police for transgressing laws and social standards. In breaking the law I had become “other” in a capitalist system that is so heavily reliant upon carceral control to function. As Angela Y. Davis (Are Prisons Obsolete, 2011) said: “The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.” And just as the body of a pig is something abstract to be dominated as a symbol of otherness, so too was my body stripped naked, exposed, humiliated, and dominated for standing for the pigs.
I was not physically violent. I was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I posed no threat to any person there.
But yet I had to be punished, in a space where my autonomy was stripped and my body objectified and violated in pursuit of carceral control.
When I saw Olivia, I saw a part of myself.
That part is still sorely wounded.
Rape is an act of power, that uses sex acts as weapons. This stands true whether the victim is a human or a non-human. And it is neatly compartmentalised by a society that still refuses to acknowledge the prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual assault.
Most women who speak of their own rape are faced with a set of questions that seek to deny their testimony, or justify the act. We are asked “what were you wearing, were you intoxicated, why were you in that area alone?” Our underwear is used as evidence that we consented. A smile, accepting a lift home, accepting a drink in a bar, all are acts that are used to justify our being raped. Because if we didn’t “want it” we should just say no.
I did not report my own rape. As a single mother who at the time of the assault was under the influence of MDMA, I knew that my testimony would be discredited. Worse, I would likely lose custody of my child in retribution for recreational drug usage, even though I kept those aspects of my life separate. There was no incentive to report, and every incentive to keep it secret. Therefore, what was done to me by that man remains “not a rape” in the eyes of the law. It is neatly compartmentalised, never appearing in official statistics, never being spoken of in a courtroom. And whether reported or not reported, by virtue of my recreational drug use at the time I remain in the eyes of many “not a victim.”
The sexual abuse of animals is likewise divided into categories. There is bestiality, the rape of a non-human animal that is socially abhorred and punishable under the legal system. And there are those abuses perpetrated against non-human animals in pursuit of human-centric goals that are regarded as not only acceptable but necessary. The former is illegal and immoral, the latter industry standard practice. When illegal, the animal is a victim. When standard practice, the animal is a unit of production. Whether they are pigs being masturbated and inseminated, or greyhounds, horses, dairy cows, even cetaceans kept in captivity for human entertainment, the act of sexually abusing a non-human animal is an integral part of breeding practices across the associated industries.
A person may not put their penis in a pig in the eyes of society and the law. But they may masturbate a boar until he ejaculates, then stimulate a sow’s vulva and penetrate her vagina to inseminate her uterus. So long as those acts are undertaken on a farm for the purposes of breeding pigs for slaughter, it is legal and socially acceptable.
Indeed, one has to ask whether being exposed to this side of the pig industry influenced O’Reilly in his objectification of pigs beyond that which is accepted by a society that objectifies pigs in pursuit of their flesh.
And who are we to condemn O’Reilly for his acts, when in the midst of our ideologies of species dominance we consume the products manufactured through similar acts of sexual abuse? Through our purchasing power, what are we really condoning?
If those questions make you feel uncomfortable, perhaps it is time to explore why.
Change.org petition to release Olivia to a sanctuary: https://www.change.org/p/help-save-olivia-sow-8416-the-victim-of-horrific-bestiality?source_location=tag_
If this article has raised issues for you, please contact a support organisation.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Sexual Assault Support Service 24/7 line: 1800 697 877
Or visit sass.org.au
